Grow up in Exile(III)

The Dharma sister shared her experiences of walk in meditation, and lessons about time efficiency through sweeping the stone stairs in the Monastery.

Today's practice was mainly to follow the community. I asked a Dharma brother about what manual work I could do, and then got the honor to sweep stairs and the glass house. I didn’t know why I came to enjoy sweeping and cleaning since I firstly entered Beijing Longquan Monastery. But now I found it unexpectedly enabling me to calm down with joyousness. To this day, I still remember what Master Xianzeng told us three years ago when he led us into walking in deep meditation during my participation in Plurilingual Meditation Camp. “While walking, please be aware of the living beings under your feet, and try to recall all kinds of good knowledge” . Such a walk in deep meditation made me profoundly recognize my own ignorance and generate aspiration for good knowledge. Nowadays, it was so wondrous for me to realize the essence of walking in meditation when I did my sweeping right here and now: My first thought was to visualize the scene of Great Master Xuanzang sweeping the stairs of the Dayan Pagoda in the classical TV Serials —Journey to the West, which made me deeply moved to produce such gratitude that I found the ordinary sweeping so sacred. I began to sweep the stone stairs and the glass house seriously, and silently reciting the Buddha’s name. When I saw some ants running here and there, I repeatedly recited “Take refuge in the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha”. After a while, those ants disappeared from my view. When I finished my sweeping, the clean stone stairs brightened my eyes and heart, and the passing Dharma sisters smiled at me saying, “Rejoice!”A feeling of unknown joy rose up from the bottom of my heart. I came to realize that sweeping in the monastery could not only clear away my own afflictions at present, but bring about inner gratitude, light and joy.

Such a word frequently echoed to my ears right now, “Cease from evil, do good deeds, and purify one’s own mind”. Here is Ven. Master Xuecheng’s instruction to us, “Affliction leads to evil and wisdom to good”.The profound connotation of it simply manifested in such ordinary sweeping at this very moment: Affliction needs to be eliminated little by little, and wisdom to be cultivated bit by bit. Only by calming down the capricious mind can the bright pure wisdom come out, which requires us to spare no efforts in training our own mind. But why I never had such an understanding of sweeping at home previously, or even reluctantly did sweeping? This is the supreme merits and virtues on the ground of the Three Jewels. It can help us transform the lazy into the diligent, enable the ignorant to see the sacred in the ordinary, and walk toward the light in the midst of difficulty.

For the sake of sweeping the stairs, I missed the time for the first round of breakfast and thought of taking the second round. A Dharma sister skillfully reminded me of a case of rights and wrongs that the second round is generally prepared for those who served in the first round, and eaters are not qualified for the second round except for some special arrangements. Such a case made me aware of the importance of time points. That is, when time is up, I have to do something that I should do and cannot break the public rules for my own reasons. So I have to improve my efficiency of work. And then, I decided not to have breakfast in order to warn me of my lack of sense of time. On the following day, I focused my attention on sweeping，structured my time, and naturally improved my work efficiency. Finally, I caught up with the first round of taking breakfast with joy after finishing my sweeping contentedly.